More on the photoluminescence of Germanium

I admire that this student is extremely persistant in trying to find the precise information that he needs. I explained to him that I don't have any further ideas, but I could query my colleagues through CHMINF-L, the chemical information listserv. I asked him to explain exactly what he was looking for and what he already searched. He sent me this information. I will edit it and post to the listserv. Perhaps someone else may have some other ideas that would lead him to his elusive answer. Chemistry librarians at other universities may have more specialized resources not at NJIT.

Gathering in Memory of Dana Knox

Many colleagues of Dana met in the Campus Ballroom to reminisce about Dana. I was impressed when Lisa Kardos, a student of his, spoke on his impact on her. She emulates his teaching style. I now recall a little experience I had with him a few years ago. As I lectured to the chemical engineering students, I told a joke that didn't go over. Dana laughed anyway to make me feel good. He will certainly be missed by the university community.

Sad News at NJIT

We just received an announcement that Dana Knox, Assistant Provost and Professor of Chemical Engineering, suddenly passed away this morning. This is quite shocking since Dana was only in his early 50s, and I just saw him yesterday at Toni Penna's retirement luncheon. I knew Dana since I first started at NJIT in 1992. I fondly remember the lunches we had at the NJIT Pub with other faculty when he kidded about how long it would take the food to arrive after it was ordered. My condolences to his family.

Retirement Luncheon for Toni Penna

I worked with Toni Penna when I taught Freshman Seminar for 12 consecutive years. She was the administrative assistant to the Dean of Freshman Studies. About 50 people from the NJIT community came to the luncheon. It was especially nice to see some people that retired or moved on.

A Handshake is a Quiet Applause

This semester we have had students working at the reference desk to answer the routine questions. So far this has worked out well, since the students call out the librarians when there is a research question. Today I was consulted by a question for African American mathematicians. I checked the catalog under the keywords above. I found there was a subject heading women and minorities in mathematics. There was one book that really had the information this student needed. We also searched under Afro American Scientists and Mathematicians Biography. I showed him how to search MatchSciNet and Academic Search Premier under those subjects. Once he identified specific mathematicians, he could do a search under those names. This student was very appreciative of the help I gave him and shook my hand as we finished the reference transaction. A handshake is a quiet applause.

Followup Orientation for International Students

Today, I was asked to speak at a Followup Orientation for international students. We are now three weeks into the Fall semester, so I think the Director of International Students wants to make sure the students are getting acclimated the American culture in general and to life at NJIT in particular. I gave a short 5 minute talk on the library services. It was a little difficult to do since they was not a computer with internet access set up in the lecture hall. I discussed the library liaison program and that students should get to know their respective liaison.

The program started with a professor in the School of Architecture lecturing on the history of Newark. He then showed a DVD of a Rutgers professor showing students many of the points of interest in the city. It was obvious that the students were not paying attention to this. The Director even cut off the DVD.

I must ask, How much orientation is enough? This has to be evaluated as to how much staff time and effort goes into this and what is the benefit to students. If they are being bored, then this entire endeavor may just be wasted.

Photoluminescence spectra of Germanium

I have been helping a graduate student research this topic for over a week now. I must admire his persistency in trying to find a very specific aspect of this topic. I showed him how to develop search strategies in Scifinder Scholar, Scopus, and INSPEC. He is very thorough in looking at abstracts and obtaining the papers that he believes have relevant information. A little while ago he showed me a paper that discussed the spectra of p-type germanium. He explained to me that he needed the same information for the p-type.

Teaching the Environmental Engineering Class

For many years I have given my standard library lecture for ENE 262 taught by Professor Taha Marhaba. I think he sets the record for hearing my lecture the highest number of times since I have been at NJIT. The students are given a choice of assignments. I demonstrate how to use Scifinder Scholar and Scopus to find the information that they need. Below is the list for this semester:

1. Pharmaceutical compounds in source water; assessment, types, solutions.
2. Removal of Endocrine-disturbing Compounds (EDCs) from Water.
3. Nanotechnology for treatment of environmental pollution.
4. Sensors for water supply security.
5. Synthetic organic substances in the air that are of concern to drinking water; sources, types, effects, prevention and removal.
6. Greywater Reuse; requirements, technology, acceptance, regulations
7. Formation and reduction of smog in the atmosphere; chemistry of formation, regulations and treaties, solutions.
8. State of the Art of Landfilling
9. Impact of Various Winter Road Deicing Processes on the Environment
10. Solidification and stabilization of hazardous waste.
11. Disinfection of drinking water; regulations and standards, types and chemistry, advantages/disadvantages, outlook.

Concerned about my TIAA-CREF Pension

For my 18 years working at universities I have had a TIAA-CREF pension. NJIT pays 8% of my salary while I also donate a portion of my income to the fund which is split into a savings account and a stock portfolio. I am concerned since the stock market has dropped so much recently. I was told not to worry since I don't plan on retiring for at least 9 years. In that time the stock market should recover.

Teaching my class on how to find physical properties of chemical substances

I must have taught my class on how to find physical properties of chemical substances since the first year I was at NJIT in 1992. A narrated version of my Powerpoint could be found linked at http://library.njit.edu/researchhelpdesk/subjectguides/phys-prop.php . That page lists resources that I show students where they can find the physical property data that they need. There was a technological glitch today, the library's laptop could not connect with the Internet outside of NJIT. I was able to navigate through the NJIT library pages, but I could not go outside on the Internet. Fortunately, one of the students lent me his laptop so that I could demonstrate some sites. For years I have shown Chemfinder as a source of data, but its publisher has greatly restricting the amount of data available free on the web. I gave the students an assignment due next week.

QANDANJ, a chat reference service

NJIT participates in a chat service called QANDANJ. Students and the general public can submit questions that we try to answer. Today I received a questions about the budget for military technology and World War II. I used Academic Search Premier to find articles and WorldCat to find books that could answer this patron's question. I was never thrilled with the concept of chat reference since the time it takes to communicate is longer than with a face to face encounter. New information technologies are supposed to save time while chat reference can take longer. We also use a chat service at the eference desk.

Just a routine day until 7 PM

I was on the late shift today, so I missed the campus event in memory of those lost on September 11, 2001. There were some alumni and a former trustee who perished on that horrific day. The wife of the Dean of Student Services also died in the World Trade Center. Today, I just verified some interlibrary loan requests. We received a small allotment of money to purchase books, which I'd like to spend before they take it away. At 7 PM i got a challenging question from a graduate student. He was looking for photoluminescence spectra of germanium. It turns out that INSPEC was the best database for this question since it covers the physics literature better than Scifinder or Scopus.

Compiling a list of Chairs of Chemical Engineering Departments

The chemical engineering department here at NJIT will soon be advertising a faculty opening. Since they want to send the advertisements to chemical engineering departments over the country they asked me to compile a list of department chairs. I compiled it using a directory produced at the University of Texas. It was a tedious job, but I completed it in a few days.

Graduate Seminar for Chemistry and Enviromental Science - Almost a Murphy's law day

The biggest pain in the neck in giving classes is setting up the computer and XGA. The professor had a laptop with Windows Vista. I never used that new operating system and it was hard to navigate. It failed to download Scifinder Scholar. Luckily, another professor who was there offered his laptop with Windows XP. 99% of my epxerience with PCs is with a desktop so I had a little difficulty naviagting with the trackball on this laptop. I didn't want to waste any more time so I could talk about Scifinder Scholar, but could not demonstrate it. I completed the Powerpoint and then showed some of the web sites that I compiled with chemical information. This time I did get some questions from students. It does seem that some are too shy to speak in front of the class, but came to speak with me privately afterwards. I got this one nice comment from a student:

Hi Mr. Slutsky,I was very well enlightened by your presentation today, thank you. I will be very pleased if you can send me a copy of your presentation.Thank you.

Activities of the Day

1. At 9 AM I met with Keith Williams and Blake Haggerty to set up Moodle, a course management software package, to work with the Research Roadmap classes given by the NJIT Library staff.

2. At 10 AM I started to compile a list of chemical engineering chairs with their e-mail addresses at the request of Reg Tomkins. They have some openings and want to send the announcements to chemical engineering departments across the USA.

3. At 11 AM I came to the reference desk. Again, no substantial questions. I was kind to a few students who desparately needed to print out documents while there were no open computers in the Information commons. I let them print from the computer at the reference desk.

4. I received an e-mail from Ron Jantz of Rutgers agreeing to speak at the METRO Science Librarians meeting at the end of October.

Coming in to lecture on a Saturday

In the 16 years I have been at NJIT I have never gone there on a Saturday. For the last few years I have given my information lectures to Chem E 396, an undergraduate course. There are 3 lecures that I give:

1. Overview
2. Scifinder Scholar
3. Scopus and other databases

This semester the course was given on Saturday. I told the professor I will condense my 3 lectures into one so I would only have to make one trip. The inconvenience about coming in Saturdays is that the trains run less often. When I got to downtown Newark by New Jersey Transit, I decided to walk the one mile to NJIT instead of taking the Newark light rail. I was just afraid that the light rail would run extremely infrequently. I got to the lecture on time and finished by 11:30 at the professor's request. Due to the impending tropic storm I decided to leave immediately to try to get home before it started.

The campus was very empty this Saturday. I assume that most of the dormitory students who live in NJ, go home for the weekend. When I returned to the library, Cherron and Clifford were there with only 10 or so students in the information common. The nuisance of the day was spending twice as much time traveling as I was there. I only have to do it once.

Lecture to Chemical Engineering Graduate Students

Yesterday at 4 PM, I gave my lecture on how to find information in chemistry and chemical engineering to graduate students taking CHE 794 - Professional presentations. All students in that class are required to talk about their research projects. It was convenient to give my lecture at the beginning of the semester. Since most of the students had heard me talk before I decided on the fly to give my advanced lecture. I assumed that most of the students were aware of the NJIT databases. I showed the the list of online resources that I compiled over the years. I also demonstrated some of the advanced features of Scifinder Scholar and Scopus. It is frustrating when students don't ask questions. Is it because they are just not interested or do the know the material anyway. I asked for some sample search questions, but nobody volunteered so I had to bring my own searches. It is also hard to determine the impact of my lecture on the students.

Visit from an old friend

Dr. Stanislav Dukhin has intermitantly been a research professor of civil engineering at NJIT. He doesn' teach classes, but works with graduates students on their research projects. For a while, I see him quite regularly, but then he "disappears". Today I saw him for the first time in at least a year. He must be in his late 70s and has published prolifically for many years. However, every time he comes to see me, I must patiently explain to him the bascis of finding books and periodical articles. Since he lost his computing privileges at NJIT, he told me that he just searched Google and found a lot of junk. Today I showed him Google Scholar which is a free database of research articles. I did an author search on him in Scopus and found 194 articles. Below is a list of his most recent publications:

Dukhin, S. S., Kovalchuk, V. I., Aksenenko, E. V., & Miller, R. (2008). Surfactant accumulation within the top foam layer due to rupture of external foam films. Advances in Colloid and Interface Science, 137(1), 45-56. Retrieved from www.scopus.com

Dukhin, S. S., Shen, Y., Dave, R., & Pfeffer, R. (2007). Development in modeling submicron particle formation in two phases flow of solvent-supercritical antisolvent emulsion. Advances in Colloid and Interface Science, 134-135, 72-88. Retrieved from www.scopus.com

Dukhin, A. S., Dukhin, S. S., & Goetz, P. J. (2007). Gravity as a factor of aggregative stability and coagulation. Advances in Colloid and Interface Science, 134-135, 35-71. Retrieved from www.scopus.com

Dukhin, S. S., Zimmermann, R., & Werner, C. (2007). Electrophoresis of soft particles at high electrolyte concentrations: An interpretation by the henry theory. Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, 313(2), 676-679. Retrieved from www.scopus.com

Dukhin, A. S., Fluck, D., Goetz, P. J., Shilov, V. N., & Dukhin, S. S. (2007). Characterization of fractal particles using acoustics, electroacoustics, light scattering, image analysis, and conductivity. Langmuir, 23(10), 5338-5351. Retrieved from www.scopus.com

Meeting with the Principal Investigator of the Faculty Publications Database

Today I met with Nancy Steffen-Fluhr the principal investigator of the project to compile the faculty publications database. One of the goals of her project is to investigate the collaborative relationships among the contributing authors. She is very concerned that the database be as exhaustive as possible. She discovered that there were many publications of the CVs of NJIT faculty that were not found in the commercial databases. We determined that publications at small conferences and in new e-journals were not included in Scopus or the Ebscohost databases. We spent much of our time in my office and at lunch discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the commercial bibliographic databases that we have. For example Scopus was very good at picking up the author affiliations, but there was inconsistency in the data entry. Are we the New Jersey Institute of Technology, NJIT, New Jersey Inst of Technol or what? She figured that there are 16 ways the institution name could be in a database. The coverage of Scopus is excellent after 1995, but there still is a lack of confidence in older data. We are especially concerned about the affiliation data in the ACM Digital Library since that database has publications not found anywhere else. For this project Nancy was not concerned about the School of Architecture or the humanities.

Typical First Day of Classes

I had to work the late shift so I didn't arrive at NJIT until 1 PM. I missed the president's annual pancake breakfast that gives to the community. I was bombarded with textbook questions. One student just said that the bookstore was sold out of the calculus text. We now refere questions about computer accounts to the lab assistant. There are always a directional questions since new students don't know their way around the campus yet. Tomorrow is another day.

Not Teaching Freshman Seminar this Year

I started at NJIT in September 1992, but started teaching a section of Freshman seminar in September 1996. Perhaps facilitate is a better word than teach. I did this for 12 years in a row, but I feel this year it is time for me to give it up. A few of my colleagues in the library did participate in the program, but not nearly as long as I. It was my opinion that Freshman Seminar should not be a burden on the students, since although attendance is required, there is no academic credit for it. Students recieve a grade of satisfactory or unsatisfactory at the end of the 10 week course. Over the years I failed only a few students who were absent too many times. My feeling is that cutting class will catch up to them sooner or later. For most of the 12 years I organized the library tours. One of my biggest diasappointments was when several students in my section a few years ago, walked away from my tour. Was it that boring? Since blogging is so popular among students, I assigned students last year to write a blog of 10 entires discussing their experiences as a first year student. Less than half the class did the assignment that I thought would be fun for them.

I felt that pariticipating in the Freshman seminar program was good service to NJIT. I decided to stp, because I feel that a younger person would be more effective in reaching the students. It is 41 years since I was a freshman at CCNY. 1967 was in a completely different era socially, politically, and technlogically. I think a graduate student or even an upperclassman would be more effective in helping new students acclimate to college life.